Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry, whose software products have been used to make many of the past year’s biggest motion pictures, today announced a management buyout for an undisclosed sum led by Advent Venture Partners. We caught up with Bill Collis (CEO) and Simon Robinson (Chief Scientist) of The Foundry to find out exactly what this entails and, most importantly, how it will affect their development program in the future…
TF: Bill & Simon, thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us today. I am sure that you are very busy with the recent acquisition of The Foundry by Advent.
BILL: It's been a hectic few months - we've been dealing with the complexity of the Buyout and at the same maintaining the growth in the company. But we seem to have been successful on both fronts – and as you can imagine both are very tricky things to do in the current financial climate. So we're feeling rather buoyant as a result, as you can imagine.
TF: Simon, before we carry on and just incase there is anyone out there who has not been fortunate enough to play with the Foundry sparks sets, could you give us a quick run down of your packages?
SIMON:Tinder is a large set of sparks, including both creative effects and practical tools, used in day-to-day compositing work to get the 'look' of a shot right. Keylight is an industry-proven blue/green screen keyer, developed out of original production technology originally created at the Computer Film Company. It is simple to use and is particularly good at tackling reflections, semi-transparent areas and hair. Anvil is a set of colour correction and colour manipulation tools developed out of telecine know-how. And finally, Furnace is a collection of plug-in tools to help film compositors correct common problems. Much of Furnace is based around hard maths and motion-estimation, giving tools which help with retiming, wire removal, clean plating, grain, camera shake, flicker and so on.
TF: So how will this recent acquisition affect the development program and ultimately the end user?
BILL: In many ways, the acquisition doesn't directly affect our development plans. We've always been open about sharing our research and development roadmaps, and there are no sudden changes now to those plans. What we've gained now is the weight of some experienced investors who can help continue the growth in the company. What it gives our end users is the reassurance that The Foundry's development plans are built on a solid base. The company is clearly not a financial risk to an investor. It's not a financial risk to our customers (people like to know you'll still be around tomorrow, next year, the year after).
TF: So Bill what does the acquisition mean for The Foundry?
BILL: The day-to-day operation of the company continues as before. The management remains the same, with the same objectives. There are no staff changes, apart from continuing to grow the development teams over the coming months. The company and its branding aren't going to change into something different – it's very much business as usual.
TF: So, as end users, we can be sure that the same team is still involved in the continued development under the Foundry umbrella?
BILL: Same team. Same goals. But now with expert advice on how to achieve those goals.
TF: Will the price of your product be affected by this acquisition?
BILL: The deal doesn't impact pricing.
TF: Well this is great news for the growing community of Flame Artists who look more and more to 3rd party plugins to achieve their creative goals. Is there anything exciting that we can look out for?
SIMON: The Research Team these days is producing a lot of new technology around camera-tracking, lens distortion calibration, stereo-3D corrections, rolling-shutter correction and segmentation, to name a few. Getting these harder technologies into product form is almost as hard as getting the maths right in the first place, so we'll be doing a lot more interaction with our favourite customers before we can give an honest answer to how it will appear. And if we haven't talked and you have production requirements, come and talk to us. Twist our arms a little more.
TF: Well thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. We very much look forward to an exciting future and will look forward to an update of your collaborative efforts when the time is right!
BILL: Thank you – our pleasure.
About THE FOUNDRY:
The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post production. On February 10th 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite. The company now holds two products with AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology including high-end compositing system Nuke.The Foundry’s products support a wide range of host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk® Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, Baselight, Film Master, Nuke, Scratch, Shake and Final Cut Pro.Customers include: Digital Domain, The Moving Picture Company, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Warner Bros and Weta Digital Ltd.
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles. For more information please visit The Foundry’s website at www.thefoundry.co.uk, or call +44 20 7434 0449.
© The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
